WAS:: Cliques, public, private. IS: Preserving email correspondence

[Nick Thompson]

EVERYBODY,

This material is way too good to be packed down into the midden of old
email.  SO! Once again, I am going to ask this group a question I have asked
before: how can we develop conventions (or write a software program) that
will turn email correspondence into readable text.  The three main problems
are (1) headers (2) redundancy and (3) larding (which Steve Does here).
Larding is the practice of distributing ones response in the text.

I suspect some simple conventions and a word macro would do the trick, but
believe me, if you try to rescue one of these interchanges, it is VERY hard
work.  

Nick  

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 12:54 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Cliques, public, private.

Glen wrote (in response to my recent massive missive) -
> I will briefly match your story with one of my own, then jump to a
> conclusion.  I used to do more tunneling than I do now.  All growing
> up I maintained (almost disjoint) sets of acquaintances.  In high
> school they had names: heads, jocks, brains, etc.  Somehow, I managed
> to float easily between them, controlling information flow so that any
> antipathy one group had for another didn't bleed into an antipathy
> toward me personally.  In elementary school and college, there were
> fewer names but sharper incisions.  In elementary school, they were very
temporary.
> In college, they were very long-lasting.  E.g. if you "collapsed" into
> a Republican or perhaps a fan of Ayn Rand, you stayed there until long
> after college had ended.
I parallel your experience here.  I grew up isolated from people in general
and peers in particular.  I had one sister 2 years older, my parents with a
father who worked long hours.  We mostly lived further
from other people than I could walk easily alone.   When I arrived at
public school (a 2 mile walk, uphill each way, often in the snow) at age
6 I had very limited social experience with anyone much less children my
age.  I became very good, very quickly at integrating with any group.  
There weren't many, it was a small school in a small town.  But I was so
curious about other people and the dynamics of 3 or 5 or 9 boys running like
a pack of wolves in the playground that I had to join in.  I did not
distinguish gender and was happy to sit and make mudpies with the girls, and
many of them were as at home "roping" my heels as I ran past (yes, the
school toys included lariats as well as kickballs) as the boys.

By high school I was in a large town, small city where I could know all of
my classmates (eventually a graduating class of 300) but not well
like I did with a class of roughly 20.   I knew how to kick shit with
the stompers, I was clever enough to hang with the honor society kids, I was
"hip" enough to hang with the drama kids, or the dopers if I wanted.  I was
not a team-sport kindof guy but was physical enough to
hang with the jocks.   But I was never really "in".  I was invited in.  
But being fully "in" meant excluding members who were not "in".  So the
Stompers had to pick fights with the Jocks and the Stoners and tease the
Drama and Band and Honor Roll kids.  Similarly the Jocks and Stoners would
pick on the "good kids" and pick fights with the other "bad kids".  When I
would stand up for the good kid they were picking on or refuse to join the
rising rumble amongst bad kids on any side, I was
marked... I must be "one of them".   It never really caused me much
trouble except that it was clear that I wasn't one of them and would
never be even though I shared many of their interests and attitudes.   I
was as tough as most of the jocks or cowboys and the Stoners could be pretty
mean but well, they were always stoned, so... whatever... but I was also a
good student and *liked* most of the band/drama/smart kids
even though they could be tweaks.   But I also *liked* and identified
with the cowboys (grew up pretty much as one), and the jocks (liked being
athletic) and even the stoners (had my own outlaw side).  So what was all
the clicquing and intolerance about? Really?  And why was I one
of the few who could cut across those picket lines?   And one of the few
who didn't want to be a member of any one enough to reject the others?

Later it was politics... I knew I didn't want to hand my body and soul to
the US military under the circumstances of the Vietnam War... I wasn't sure
it was a bogus war as many of my peers seemed to be, but I
wasn't sure it was righteous as the remaining peers seemed to be.   My
leftie friends were sure I was a rightie and my rightie friends were sure I
was a leftie and since I'd read too much Ayn Rand and Bob Heinlein before I
had matured, I should have been a Libertarian but damned if they didn't all
seem like arrogant, selfish pricks to me.  
This holds with me to today.  I voted for Obama twice for reasons which
probably don't fit those of anyone else who voted for him (hyperbole) and I
would have voted for McCain when he was going up against Bush but not after
he picked up Palin...  I am a big Gary Johnson fan on many topics, but
couldn't stand to throw my vote this time just to make a point.

As for public/private, I didn't hide my affinity with these groups in high
school... but they played "don't ask, don't tell" right up until I had to
confront someone(s) about their exclusive (and abusive) behaviour
of my friends who might not be "inside".   I wasn't afraid the jocks
would find out I got good grades or that the stoners would find out that I
rode horses, or that the goodie two-shoes would realize that I was willing
to break school rules or even real laws if it suited me
enough.   But I also had and required a private life.  I spent hours of
my time alone, enjoying the privacy of my own thoughts and actions.   If
anyone had insisted on taking that kind of privacy from me, I would have
been furious.   My parents, my teachers, my bosses, my friends all
managed not to conspire to invade my private spaces, private times.  
Yet I had acquaintances who endured close supervision to the point of
parents or teachers or bosses practically expecting to be able to read
their minds.   I watched people trade their privacy of thought and
action for acceptance and approval.

>    I maintained my cross-group faculties until long after college.  I
> think it's what allowed me to successfully transition to the SFI from
> Lockheed Martin.
It served me well at LANL, even after it became somewhat of a hellhole
(apologies to Marcus and others still there, I'm not saying it is that for
you, just that it became that for me after 20 something years).
>    Nowadays, however, I have
> grown impatient with entertaining others' stories and ideas.
Then I am honored that you have entertained mine so far with some
superficial level of patience <grin>.
>    When/if I
> deign to argue with someone, my rhetoric is (seemingly) full of non
> sequiturs because I want to skip to the end ... and having made a
> lifetime out of arguing, I believe myself to be capable of predicting
> where an argument will end up.
You don't hold a candle to my wife who is twice as smart as I ever will be,
but also not particularly linear.  She doesn't just skip steps she makes 270
degree turns while I'm not looking without deigning to bring me up to speed.
I take a lot of beatings when I argue with her, but I think I'm a better
listener and thinker for it.
>    That impatience has seriously damaged some of the relationships
> I've had with people who _thought_ they liked me. >8^)  But, in the
> end, I remember the quote from FDR (I think): "I ask you to judge me
> by he enemies I have made."
Well, it is probably auspicious that I started out thinking I *didn't*
like you.   I didn't like Doug when I met him the first time... but
"curmudgeon" grows on me I guess.
> Anyway, because I am a professional simulant
Wow, that sounds like a line right out of Bladerunner... did you say
Simulant or Replicant?
> , I still have to maintain
> an ability to tunnel in and out of gravity wells.  When I engage a new
> client and go through the requirements extraction process, my old
> facility with perspective hopping revives and I end up having fun.
Yup, I know the game, and play it well (enough).
> Conclusion of this silly missive: I'd like to be able to run some
> experiments like the following.  Take all the guns from all the gun
> advocates and hand them to the gun controlists.  Force them to use and
> abuse the guns for a significant amount of time.
I was thinking impregnating every man who was anti-choice and forcing
them to birth and raise the babies.   It might not change their mind
about abortion (I actually hope it wouldn't) but it might make them a lot
more sympathetic and nurturing toward the women who *do* choose abortion.
And it would also keep them off the streets in the meantime.
>   Then compare surveys
> taken before and after the experiment.  A similar experiment with any
> given tool would be interesting.
You'll have to pry my cordless drill and oscilliscope from my cold, dead
fingers!

>   I know I'd like a few months to play with our army of drones in
> foreign countries, for example.
And I'd like to watch a few third world countries play with our army of
drones in our country for a few months.  Well, not really.  I suppose I'd
rather see what a few dramatic performance and guerilla artists did with
them instead.

-Steve

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

[Owen Densmore]

I doubt if it could be automated without one of

1 - Serious obeying of an agreed upon structure of the emails

2 - Serious machine learning algorithms

Instead, there are lots of tools that make it easier for you to do it by hand. An example is the class of "productivity tools" called outliners.  Here's a discussion of a set of them.

     http://goo.gl/q27LJ

Don't worry about their being mac oriented, there are web versions and versions for every computer.

Another approach would be for us all to stop using mail and instead use something that lends itself to different "views" .. like outliners do.  Using social media like Google+ etc help because they are designed to be "mashed up".

Tom may have a handle of several such tools.

   -- Owen

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

EVERYBODY,

This material is way too good to be packed down into the midden of old
email.  SO! Once again, I am going to ask this group a question I have asked
before: how can we develop conventions (or write a software program) that
will turn email correspondence into readable text.  The three main problems
are (1) headers (2) redundancy and (3) larding (which Steve Does here).
Larding is the practice of distributing ones response in the text.

I suspect some simple conventions and a word macro would do the trick, but
believe me, if you try to rescue one of these interchanges, it is VERY hard
work.

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 12:54 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Cliques, public, private.

Glen wrote (in response to my recent massive missive) -
> I will briefly match your story with one of my own, then jump to a
> conclusion.  I used to do more tunneling than I do now.  All growing
> up I maintained (almost disjoint) sets of acquaintances.  In high
> school they had names: heads, jocks, brains, etc.  Somehow, I managed
> to float easily between them, controlling information flow so that any
> antipathy one group had for another didn't bleed into an antipathy
> toward me personally.  In elementary school and college, there were
> fewer names but sharper incisions.  In elementary school, they were very
temporary.
> In college, they were very long-lasting.  E.g. if you "collapsed" into
> a Republican or perhaps a fan of Ayn Rand, you stayed there until long
> after college had ended.
I parallel your experience here.  I grew up isolated from people in general
and peers in particular.  I had one sister 2 years older, my parents with a
father who worked long hours.  We mostly lived further
from other people than I could walk easily alone.   When I arrived at
public school (a 2 mile walk, uphill each way, often in the snow) at age
6 I had very limited social experience with anyone much less children my
age.  I became very good, very quickly at integrating with any group.
There weren't many, it was a small school in a small town.  But I was so
curious about other people and the dynamics of 3 or 5 or 9 boys running like
a pack of wolves in the playground that I had to join in.  I did not
distinguish gender and was happy to sit and make mudpies with the girls, and
many of them were as at home "roping" my heels as I ran past (yes, the
school toys included lariats as well as kickballs) as the boys.

By high school I was in a large town, small city where I could know all of
my classmates (eventually a graduating class of 300) but not well
like I did with a class of roughly 20.   I knew how to kick shit with
the stompers, I was clever enough to hang with the honor society kids, I was
"hip" enough to hang with the drama kids, or the dopers if I wanted.  I was
not a team-sport kindof guy but was physical enough to
hang with the jocks.   But I was never really "in".  I was invited in.
But being fully "in" meant excluding members who were not "in".  So the
Stompers had to pick fights with the Jocks and the Stoners and tease the
Drama and Band and Honor Roll kids.  Similarly the Jocks and Stoners would
pick on the "good kids" and pick fights with the other "bad kids".  When I
would stand up for the good kid they were picking on or refuse to join the
rising rumble amongst bad kids on any side, I was
marked... I must be "one of them".   It never really caused me much
trouble except that it was clear that I wasn't one of them and would
never be even though I shared many of their interests and attitudes.   I
was as tough as most of the jocks or cowboys and the Stoners could be pretty
mean but well, they were always stoned, so... whatever... but I was also a
good student and *liked* most of the band/drama/smart kids
even though they could be tweaks.   But I also *liked* and identified
with the cowboys (grew up pretty much as one), and the jocks (liked being
athletic) and even the stoners (had my own outlaw side).  So what was all
the clicquing and intolerance about? Really?  And why was I one
of the few who could cut across those picket lines?   And one of the few
who didn't want to be a member of any one enough to reject the others?

Later it was politics... I knew I didn't want to hand my body and soul to
the US military under the circumstances of the Vietnam War... I wasn't sure
it was a bogus war as many of my peers seemed to be, but I
wasn't sure it was righteous as the remaining peers seemed to be.   My
leftie friends were sure I was a rightie and my rightie friends were sure I
was a leftie and since I'd read too much Ayn Rand and Bob Heinlein before I
had matured, I should have been a Libertarian but damned if they didn't all
seem like arrogant, selfish pricks to me.
This holds with me to today.  I voted for Obama twice for reasons which
probably don't fit those of anyone else who voted for him (hyperbole) and I
would have voted for McCain when he was going up against Bush but not after
he picked up Palin...  I am a big Gary Johnson fan on many topics, but
couldn't stand to throw my vote this time just to make a point.

As for public/private, I didn't hide my affinity with these groups in high
school... but they played "don't ask, don't tell" right up until I had to
confront someone(s) about their exclusive (and abusive) behaviour
of my friends who might not be "inside".   I wasn't afraid the jocks
would find out I got good grades or that the stoners would find out that I
rode horses, or that the goodie two-shoes would realize that I was willing
to break school rules or even real laws if it suited me
enough.   But I also had and required a private life.  I spent hours of
my time alone, enjoying the privacy of my own thoughts and actions.   If
anyone had insisted on taking that kind of privacy from me, I would have
been furious.   My parents, my teachers, my bosses, my friends all
managed not to conspire to invade my private spaces, private times.
Yet I had acquaintances who endured close supervision to the point of
parents or teachers or bosses practically expecting to be able to read
their minds.   I watched people trade their privacy of thought and
action for acceptance and approval.

>    I maintained my cross-group faculties until long after college.  I
> think it's what allowed me to successfully transition to the SFI from
> Lockheed Martin.
It served me well at LANL, even after it became somewhat of a hellhole
(apologies to Marcus and others still there, I'm not saying it is that for
you, just that it became that for me after 20 something years).
>    Nowadays, however, I have
> grown impatient with entertaining others' stories and ideas.
Then I am honored that you have entertained mine so far with some
superficial level of patience <grin>.
>    When/if I
> deign to argue with someone, my rhetoric is (seemingly) full of non
> sequiturs because I want to skip to the end ... and having made a
> lifetime out of arguing, I believe myself to be capable of predicting
> where an argument will end up.
You don't hold a candle to my wife who is twice as smart as I ever will be,
but also not particularly linear.  She doesn't just skip steps she makes 270
degree turns while I'm not looking without deigning to bring me up to speed.
I take a lot of beatings when I argue with her, but I think I'm a better
listener and thinker for it.
>    That impatience has seriously damaged some of the relationships
> I've had with people who _thought_ they liked me. >8^)  But, in the
> end, I remember the quote from FDR (I think): "I ask you to judge me
> by he enemies I have made."
Well, it is probably auspicious that I started out thinking I *didn't*
like you.   I didn't like Doug when I met him the first time... but
"curmudgeon" grows on me I guess.
> Anyway, because I am a professional simulant
Wow, that sounds like a line right out of Bladerunner... did you say
Simulant or Replicant?
> , I still have to maintain
> an ability to tunnel in and out of gravity wells.  When I engage a new
> client and go through the requirements extraction process, my old
> facility with perspective hopping revives and I end up having fun.
Yup, I know the game, and play it well (enough).
> Conclusion of this silly missive: I'd like to be able to run some
> experiments like the following.  Take all the guns from all the gun
> advocates and hand them to the gun controlists.  Force them to use and
> abuse the guns for a significant amount of time.
I was thinking impregnating every man who was anti-choice and forcing
them to birth and raise the babies.   It might not change their mind
about abortion (I actually hope it wouldn't) but it might make them a lot
more sympathetic and nurturing toward the women who *do* choose abortion.
And it would also keep them off the streets in the meantime.
>   Then compare surveys
> taken before and after the experiment.  A similar experiment with any
> given tool would be interesting.
You'll have to pry my cordless drill and oscilliscope from my cold, dead
fingers!

>   I know I'd like a few months to play with our army of drones in
> foreign countries, for example.
And I'd like to watch a few third world countries play with our army of
drones in our country for a few months.  Well, not really.  I suppose I'd
rather see what a few dramatic performance and guerilla artists did with
them instead.

-Steve

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

[Robert Holmes-3]

Or pay an editor to do it. Is the dollar value of Nick's desire to see this properly recorded and archived greater or less than an editor's fee?

Let's watch the free market in action.

—R

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 10:46 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I doubt if it could be automated without one of

1 - Serious obeying of an agreed upon structure of the emails

2 - Serious machine learning algorithms

Instead, there are lots of tools that make it easier for you to do it by hand. An example is the class of "productivity tools" called outliners.  Here's a discussion of a set of them.

     http://goo.gl/q27LJ

Don't worry about their being mac oriented, there are web versions and versions for every computer.

Another approach would be for us all to stop using mail and instead use something that lends itself to different "views" .. like outliners do.  Using social media like Google+ etc help because they are designed to be "mashed up".

Tom may have a handle of several such tools.

   -- Owen

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

EVERYBODY,

This material is way too good to be packed down into the midden of old
email.  SO! Once again, I am going to ask this group a question I have asked
before: how can we develop conventions (or write a software program) that
will turn email correspondence into readable text.  The three main problems
are (1) headers (2) redundancy and (3) larding (which Steve Does here).
Larding is the practice of distributing ones response in the text.

I suspect some simple conventions and a word macro would do the trick, but
believe me, if you try to rescue one of these interchanges, it is VERY hard
work.

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 12:54 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Cliques, public, private.

Glen wrote (in response to my recent massive missive) -
> I will briefly match your story with one of my own, then jump to a
> conclusion.  I used to do more tunneling than I do now.  All growing
> up I maintained (almost disjoint) sets of acquaintances.  In high
> school they had names: heads, jocks, brains, etc.  Somehow, I managed
> to float easily between them, controlling information flow so that any
> antipathy one group had for another didn't bleed into an antipathy
> toward me personally.  In elementary school and college, there were
> fewer names but sharper incisions.  In elementary school, they were very
temporary.
> In college, they were very long-lasting.  E.g. if you "collapsed" into
> a Republican or perhaps a fan of Ayn Rand, you stayed there until long
> after college had ended.
I parallel your experience here.  I grew up isolated from people in general
and peers in particular.  I had one sister 2 years older, my parents with a
father who worked long hours.  We mostly lived further
from other people than I could walk easily alone.   When I arrived at
public school (a 2 mile walk, uphill each way, often in the snow) at age
6 I had very limited social experience with anyone much less children my
age.  I became very good, very quickly at integrating with any group.
There weren't many, it was a small school in a small town.  But I was so
curious about other people and the dynamics of 3 or 5 or 9 boys running like
a pack of wolves in the playground that I had to join in.  I did not
distinguish gender and was happy to sit and make mudpies with the girls, and
many of them were as at home "roping" my heels as I ran past (yes, the
school toys included lariats as well as kickballs) as the boys.

By high school I was in a large town, small city where I could know all of
my classmates (eventually a graduating class of 300) but not well
like I did with a class of roughly 20.   I knew how to kick shit with
the stompers, I was clever enough to hang with the honor society kids, I was
"hip" enough to hang with the drama kids, or the dopers if I wanted.  I was
not a team-sport kindof guy but was physical enough to
hang with the jocks.   But I was never really "in".  I was invited in.
But being fully "in" meant excluding members who were not "in".  So the
Stompers had to pick fights with the Jocks and the Stoners and tease the
Drama and Band and Honor Roll kids.  Similarly the Jocks and Stoners would
pick on the "good kids" and pick fights with the other "bad kids".  When I
would stand up for the good kid they were picking on or refuse to join the
rising rumble amongst bad kids on any side, I was
marked... I must be "one of them".   It never really caused me much
trouble except that it was clear that I wasn't one of them and would
never be even though I shared many of their interests and attitudes.   I
was as tough as most of the jocks or cowboys and the Stoners could be pretty
mean but well, they were always stoned, so... whatever... but I was also a
good student and *liked* most of the band/drama/smart kids
even though they could be tweaks.   But I also *liked* and identified
with the cowboys (grew up pretty much as one), and the jocks (liked being
athletic) and even the stoners (had my own outlaw side).  So what was all
the clicquing and intolerance about? Really?  And why was I one
of the few who could cut across those picket lines?   And one of the few
who didn't want to be a member of any one enough to reject the others?

Later it was politics... I knew I didn't want to hand my body and soul to
the US military under the circumstances of the Vietnam War... I wasn't sure
it was a bogus war as many of my peers seemed to be, but I
wasn't sure it was righteous as the remaining peers seemed to be.   My
leftie friends were sure I was a rightie and my rightie friends were sure I
was a leftie and since I'd read too much Ayn Rand and Bob Heinlein before I
had matured, I should have been a Libertarian but damned if they didn't all
seem like arrogant, selfish pricks to me.
This holds with me to today.  I voted for Obama twice for reasons which
probably don't fit those of anyone else who voted for him (hyperbole) and I
would have voted for McCain when he was going up against Bush but not after
he picked up Palin...  I am a big Gary Johnson fan on many topics, but
couldn't stand to throw my vote this time just to make a point.

As for public/private, I didn't hide my affinity with these groups in high
school... but they played "don't ask, don't tell" right up until I had to
confront someone(s) about their exclusive (and abusive) behaviour
of my friends who might not be "inside".   I wasn't afraid the jocks
would find out I got good grades or that the stoners would find out that I
rode horses, or that the goodie two-shoes would realize that I was willing
to break school rules or even real laws if it suited me
enough.   But I also had and required a private life.  I spent hours of
my time alone, enjoying the privacy of my own thoughts and actions.   If
anyone had insisted on taking that kind of privacy from me, I would have
been furious.   My parents, my teachers, my bosses, my friends all
managed not to conspire to invade my private spaces, private times.
Yet I had acquaintances who endured close supervision to the point of
parents or teachers or bosses practically expecting to be able to read
their minds.   I watched people trade their privacy of thought and
action for acceptance and approval.

>    I maintained my cross-group faculties until long after college.  I
> think it's what allowed me to successfully transition to the SFI from
> Lockheed Martin.
It served me well at LANL, even after it became somewhat of a hellhole
(apologies to Marcus and others still there, I'm not saying it is that for
you, just that it became that for me after 20 something years).
>    Nowadays, however, I have
> grown impatient with entertaining others' stories and ideas.
Then I am honored that you have entertained mine so far with some
superficial level of patience <grin>.
>    When/if I
> deign to argue with someone, my rhetoric is (seemingly) full of non
> sequiturs because I want to skip to the end ... and having made a
> lifetime out of arguing, I believe myself to be capable of predicting
> where an argument will end up.
You don't hold a candle to my wife who is twice as smart as I ever will be,
but also not particularly linear.  She doesn't just skip steps she makes 270
degree turns while I'm not looking without deigning to bring me up to speed.
I take a lot of beatings when I argue with her, but I think I'm a better
listener and thinker for it.
>    That impatience has seriously damaged some of the relationships
> I've had with people who _thought_ they liked me. >8^)  But, in the
> end, I remember the quote from FDR (I think): "I ask you to judge me
> by he enemies I have made."
Well, it is probably auspicious that I started out thinking I *didn't*
like you.   I didn't like Doug when I met him the first time... but
"curmudgeon" grows on me I guess.
> Anyway, because I am a professional simulant
Wow, that sounds like a line right out of Bladerunner... did you say
Simulant or Replicant?
> , I still have to maintain
> an ability to tunnel in and out of gravity wells.  When I engage a new
> client and go through the requirements extraction process, my old
> facility with perspective hopping revives and I end up having fun.
Yup, I know the game, and play it well (enough).
> Conclusion of this silly missive: I'd like to be able to run some
> experiments like the following.  Take all the guns from all the gun
> advocates and hand them to the gun controlists.  Force them to use and
> abuse the guns for a significant amount of time.
I was thinking impregnating every man who was anti-choice and forcing
them to birth and raise the babies.   It might not change their mind
about abortion (I actually hope it wouldn't) but it might make them a lot
more sympathetic and nurturing toward the women who *do* choose abortion.
And it would also keep them off the streets in the meantime.
>   Then compare surveys
> taken before and after the experiment.  A similar experiment with any
> given tool would be interesting.
You'll have to pry my cordless drill and oscilliscope from my cold, dead
fingers!

>   I know I'd like a few months to play with our army of drones in
> foreign countries, for example.
And I'd like to watch a few third world countries play with our army of
drones in our country for a few months.  Well, not really.  I suppose I'd
rather see what a few dramatic performance and guerilla artists did with
them instead.

-Steve

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[Douglas Roberts-2]

Guarantee that it would cost less to have an editor do it than it would take in developers time to implement a software system to do even part of it.  There are no existing language processing systems that  could do it all.

And Nick, I can hear you thinking, "Why can't you just..."

Probably don't want to go there until after you've designed, implemented, tested, put into production, and maintained your first software system.

--Doug

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 11:02 AM, Robert Holmes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Or pay an editor to do it. Is the dollar value of Nick's desire to see this properly recorded and archived greater or less than an editor's fee?

Let's watch the free market in action.

—R

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 10:46 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I doubt if it could be automated without one of

1 - Serious obeying of an agreed upon structure of the emails

2 - Serious machine learning algorithms

Instead, there are lots of tools that make it easier for you to do it by hand. An example is the class of "productivity tools" called outliners.  Here's a discussion of a set of them.

     http://goo.gl/q27LJ

Don't worry about their being mac oriented, there are web versions and versions for every computer.

Another approach would be for us all to stop using mail and instead use something that lends itself to different "views" .. like outliners do.  Using social media like Google+ etc help because they are designed to be "mashed up".

Tom may have a handle of several such tools.

   -- Owen

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

EVERYBODY,

This material is way too good to be packed down into the midden of old
email.  SO! Once again, I am going to ask this group a question I have asked
before: how can we develop conventions (or write a software program) that
will turn email correspondence into readable text.  The three main problems
are (1) headers (2) redundancy and (3) larding (which Steve Does here).
Larding is the practice of distributing ones response in the text.

I suspect some simple conventions and a word macro would do the trick, but
believe me, if you try to rescue one of these interchanges, it is VERY hard
work.

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 12:54 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Cliques, public, private.

Glen wrote (in response to my recent massive missive) -
> I will briefly match your story with one of my own, then jump to a
> conclusion.  I used to do more tunneling than I do now.  All growing
> up I maintained (almost disjoint) sets of acquaintances.  In high
> school they had names: heads, jocks, brains, etc.  Somehow, I managed
> to float easily between them, controlling information flow so that any
> antipathy one group had for another didn't bleed into an antipathy
> toward me personally.  In elementary school and college, there were
> fewer names but sharper incisions.  In elementary school, they were very
temporary.
> In college, they were very long-lasting.  E.g. if you "collapsed" into
> a Republican or perhaps a fan of Ayn Rand, you stayed there until long
> after college had ended.
I parallel your experience here.  I grew up isolated from people in general
and peers in particular.  I had one sister 2 years older, my parents with a
father who worked long hours.  We mostly lived further
from other people than I could walk easily alone.   When I arrived at
public school (a 2 mile walk, uphill each way, often in the snow) at age
6 I had very limited social experience with anyone much less children my
age.  I became very good, very quickly at integrating with any group.
There weren't many, it was a small school in a small town.  But I was so
curious about other people and the dynamics of 3 or 5 or 9 boys running like
a pack of wolves in the playground that I had to join in.  I did not
distinguish gender and was happy to sit and make mudpies with the girls, and
many of them were as at home "roping" my heels as I ran past (yes, the
school toys included lariats as well as kickballs) as the boys.

By high school I was in a large town, small city where I could know all of
my classmates (eventually a graduating class of 300) but not well
like I did with a class of roughly 20.   I knew how to kick shit with
the stompers, I was clever enough to hang with the honor society kids, I was
"hip" enough to hang with the drama kids, or the dopers if I wanted.  I was
not a team-sport kindof guy but was physical enough to
hang with the jocks.   But I was never really "in".  I was invited in.
But being fully "in" meant excluding members who were not "in".  So the
Stompers had to pick fights with the Jocks and the Stoners and tease the
Drama and Band and Honor Roll kids.  Similarly the Jocks and Stoners would
pick on the "good kids" and pick fights with the other "bad kids".  When I
would stand up for the good kid they were picking on or refuse to join the
rising rumble amongst bad kids on any side, I was
marked... I must be "one of them".   It never really caused me much
trouble except that it was clear that I wasn't one of them and would
never be even though I shared many of their interests and attitudes.   I
was as tough as most of the jocks or cowboys and the Stoners could be pretty
mean but well, they were always stoned, so... whatever... but I was also a
good student and *liked* most of the band/drama/smart kids
even though they could be tweaks.   But I also *liked* and identified
with the cowboys (grew up pretty much as one), and the jocks (liked being
athletic) and even the stoners (had my own outlaw side).  So what was all
the clicquing and intolerance about? Really?  And why was I one
of the few who could cut across those picket lines?   And one of the few
who didn't want to be a member of any one enough to reject the others?

Later it was politics... I knew I didn't want to hand my body and soul to
the US military under the circumstances of the Vietnam War... I wasn't sure
it was a bogus war as many of my peers seemed to be, but I
wasn't sure it was righteous as the remaining peers seemed to be.   My
leftie friends were sure I was a rightie and my rightie friends were sure I
was a leftie and since I'd read too much Ayn Rand and Bob Heinlein before I
had matured, I should have been a Libertarian but damned if they didn't all
seem like arrogant, selfish pricks to me.
This holds with me to today.  I voted for Obama twice for reasons which
probably don't fit those of anyone else who voted for him (hyperbole) and I
would have voted for McCain when he was going up against Bush but not after
he picked up Palin...  I am a big Gary Johnson fan on many topics, but
couldn't stand to throw my vote this time just to make a point.

As for public/private, I didn't hide my affinity with these groups in high
school... but they played "don't ask, don't tell" right up until I had to
confront someone(s) about their exclusive (and abusive) behaviour
of my friends who might not be "inside".   I wasn't afraid the jocks
would find out I got good grades or that the stoners would find out that I
rode horses, or that the goodie two-shoes would realize that I was willing
to break school rules or even real laws if it suited me
enough.   But I also had and required a private life.  I spent hours of
my time alone, enjoying the privacy of my own thoughts and actions.   If
anyone had insisted on taking that kind of privacy from me, I would have
been furious.   My parents, my teachers, my bosses, my friends all
managed not to conspire to invade my private spaces, private times.
Yet I had acquaintances who endured close supervision to the point of
parents or teachers or bosses practically expecting to be able to read
their minds.   I watched people trade their privacy of thought and
action for acceptance and approval.

>    I maintained my cross-group faculties until long after college.  I
> think it's what allowed me to successfully transition to the SFI from
> Lockheed Martin.
It served me well at LANL, even after it became somewhat of a hellhole
(apologies to Marcus and others still there, I'm not saying it is that for
you, just that it became that for me after 20 something years).
>    Nowadays, however, I have
> grown impatient with entertaining others' stories and ideas.
Then I am honored that you have entertained mine so far with some
superficial level of patience <grin>.
>    When/if I
> deign to argue with someone, my rhetoric is (seemingly) full of non
> sequiturs because I want to skip to the end ... and having made a
> lifetime out of arguing, I believe myself to be capable of predicting
> where an argument will end up.
You don't hold a candle to my wife who is twice as smart as I ever will be,
but also not particularly linear.  She doesn't just skip steps she makes 270
degree turns while I'm not looking without deigning to bring me up to speed.
I take a lot of beatings when I argue with her, but I think I'm a better
listener and thinker for it.
>    That impatience has seriously damaged some of the relationships
> I've had with people who _thought_ they liked me. >8^)  But, in the
> end, I remember the quote from FDR (I think): "I ask you to judge me
> by he enemies I have made."
Well, it is probably auspicious that I started out thinking I *didn't*
like you.   I didn't like Doug when I met him the first time... but
"curmudgeon" grows on me I guess.
> Anyway, because I am a professional simulant
Wow, that sounds like a line right out of Bladerunner... did you say
Simulant or Replicant?
> , I still have to maintain
> an ability to tunnel in and out of gravity wells.  When I engage a new
> client and go through the requirements extraction process, my old
> facility with perspective hopping revives and I end up having fun.
Yup, I know the game, and play it well (enough).
> Conclusion of this silly missive: I'd like to be able to run some
> experiments like the following.  Take all the guns from all the gun
> advocates and hand them to the gun controlists.  Force them to use and
> abuse the guns for a significant amount of time.
I was thinking impregnating every man who was anti-choice and forcing
them to birth and raise the babies.   It might not change their mind
about abortion (I actually hope it wouldn't) but it might make them a lot
more sympathetic and nurturing toward the women who *do* choose abortion.
And it would also keep them off the streets in the meantime.
>   Then compare surveys
> taken before and after the experiment.  A similar experiment with any
> given tool would be interesting.
You'll have to pry my cordless drill and oscilliscope from my cold, dead
fingers!

>   I know I'd like a few months to play with our army of drones in
> foreign countries, for example.
And I'd like to watch a few third world countries play with our army of
drones in our country for a few months.  Well, not really.  I suppose I'd
rather see what a few dramatic performance and guerilla artists did with
them instead.

-Steve

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-672-8213 - Mobile

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 1/19/13 10:35 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> This material is way too good to be packed down into the midden of old email.
I know someone who is a good programmer.  He's generally better than the
people around him and among other things he has been accused of being
purposely uncommunicative.  He's smart.  He has said things like "If you
want to know what's going on, read the commit log and read the source
code diffs."  Other people felt that he should write high level
documents, give talks, and so on.   He felt it was not his problem if
people were not willing or were not able to bring themselves up to
speed.  To him, they just would not engage.   He was interested in the
problem and not in educating people.  He had no problem educating himself.

There's a similar situation here.   A goal a person can have from a
conversation is to extract some information from another, as if
acquiring an asset.   Another goal a person can have is to just have a
conversation or argument for its own sake.

A slightly motivated person can handle some headers.

Marcus

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[Steve Smith]

Nick/All -

I'm happy with some conventions.   As for "larding" (inlining text point
by point), I use it because it works for me, both as a writer and a
reader, but I know it carries hazards as well, especially when done
sloppily (which I may well be guilty of).

I agree with Owen that this is a harder problem than it might seem and
the more effective answers involve using a different medium which
effectively establishes and enforces some conventions.

My most useful contribution to keeping things sane has been that despite
the length and complexity of my commentary here, I often actually delete
and/or rewrite large chunks seeking brevity and precision.

My next step is to let one of my pithier personalities take over when
I'm at the keyboard, at the risk of sounding sarcastic and cynical.

- Steve

> EVERYBODY,
>
> This material is way too good to be packed down into the midden of old
> email.  SO! Once again, I am going to ask this group a question I have asked
> before: how can we develop conventions (or write a software program) that
> will turn email correspondence into readable text.  The three main problems
> are (1) headers (2) redundancy and (3) larding (which Steve Does here).
> Larding is the practice of distributing ones response in the text.
>
> I suspect some simple conventions and a word macro would do the trick, but
> believe me, if you try to rescue one of these interchanges, it is VERY hard
> work.
>
> Nick
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
> Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 12:54 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] Cliques, public, private.
>
> Glen wrote (in response to my recent massive missive) -
>> I will briefly match your story with one of my own, then jump to a
>> conclusion.  I used to do more tunneling than I do now.  All growing
>> up I maintained (almost disjoint) sets of acquaintances.  In high
>> school they had names: heads, jocks, brains, etc.  Somehow, I managed
>> to float easily between them, controlling information flow so that any
>> antipathy one group had for another didn't bleed into an antipathy
>> toward me personally.  In elementary school and college, there were
>> fewer names but sharper incisions.  In elementary school, they were very
> temporary.
>> In college, they were very long-lasting.  E.g. if you "collapsed" into
>> a Republican or perhaps a fan of Ayn Rand, you stayed there until long
>> after college had ended.
> I parallel your experience here.  I grew up isolated from people in general
> and peers in particular.  I had one sister 2 years older, my parents with a
> father who worked long hours.  We mostly lived further
> from other people than I could walk easily alone.   When I arrived at
> public school (a 2 mile walk, uphill each way, often in the snow) at age
> 6 I had very limited social experience with anyone much less children my
> age.  I became very good, very quickly at integrating with any group.
> There weren't many, it was a small school in a small town.  But I was so
> curious about other people and the dynamics of 3 or 5 or 9 boys running like
> a pack of wolves in the playground that I had to join in.  I did not
> distinguish gender and was happy to sit and make mudpies with the girls, and
> many of them were as at home "roping" my heels as I ran past (yes, the
> school toys included lariats as well as kickballs) as the boys.
>
> By high school I was in a large town, small city where I could know all of
> my classmates (eventually a graduating class of 300) but not well
> like I did with a class of roughly 20.   I knew how to kick shit with
> the stompers, I was clever enough to hang with the honor society kids, I was
> "hip" enough to hang with the drama kids, or the dopers if I wanted.  I was
> not a team-sport kindof guy but was physical enough to
> hang with the jocks.   But I was never really "in".  I was invited in.
> But being fully "in" meant excluding members who were not "in".  So the
> Stompers had to pick fights with the Jocks and the Stoners and tease the
> Drama and Band and Honor Roll kids.  Similarly the Jocks and Stoners would
> pick on the "good kids" and pick fights with the other "bad kids".  When I
> would stand up for the good kid they were picking on or refuse to join the
> rising rumble amongst bad kids on any side, I was
> marked... I must be "one of them".   It never really caused me much
> trouble except that it was clear that I wasn't one of them and would
> never be even though I shared many of their interests and attitudes.   I
> was as tough as most of the jocks or cowboys and the Stoners could be pretty
> mean but well, they were always stoned, so... whatever... but I was also a
> good student and *liked* most of the band/drama/smart kids
> even though they could be tweaks.   But I also *liked* and identified
> with the cowboys (grew up pretty much as one), and the jocks (liked being
> athletic) and even the stoners (had my own outlaw side).  So what was all
> the clicquing and intolerance about? Really?  And why was I one
> of the few who could cut across those picket lines?   And one of the few
> who didn't want to be a member of any one enough to reject the others?
>
> Later it was politics... I knew I didn't want to hand my body and soul to
> the US military under the circumstances of the Vietnam War... I wasn't sure
> it was a bogus war as many of my peers seemed to be, but I
> wasn't sure it was righteous as the remaining peers seemed to be.   My
> leftie friends were sure I was a rightie and my rightie friends were sure I
> was a leftie and since I'd read too much Ayn Rand and Bob Heinlein before I
> had matured, I should have been a Libertarian but damned if they didn't all
> seem like arrogant, selfish pricks to me.
> This holds with me to today.  I voted for Obama twice for reasons which
> probably don't fit those of anyone else who voted for him (hyperbole) and I
> would have voted for McCain when he was going up against Bush but not after
> he picked up Palin...  I am a big Gary Johnson fan on many topics, but
> couldn't stand to throw my vote this time just to make a point.
>
> As for public/private, I didn't hide my affinity with these groups in high
> school... but they played "don't ask, don't tell" right up until I had to
> confront someone(s) about their exclusive (and abusive) behaviour
> of my friends who might not be "inside".   I wasn't afraid the jocks
> would find out I got good grades or that the stoners would find out that I
> rode horses, or that the goodie two-shoes would realize that I was willing
> to break school rules or even real laws if it suited me
> enough.   But I also had and required a private life.  I spent hours of
> my time alone, enjoying the privacy of my own thoughts and actions.   If
> anyone had insisted on taking that kind of privacy from me, I would have
> been furious.   My parents, my teachers, my bosses, my friends all
> managed not to conspire to invade my private spaces, private times.
> Yet I had acquaintances who endured close supervision to the point of
> parents or teachers or bosses practically expecting to be able to read
> their minds.   I watched people trade their privacy of thought and
> action for acceptance and approval.
>
>>     I maintained my cross-group faculties until long after college.  I
>> think it's what allowed me to successfully transition to the SFI from
>> Lockheed Martin.
> It served me well at LANL, even after it became somewhat of a hellhole
> (apologies to Marcus and others still there, I'm not saying it is that for
> you, just that it became that for me after 20 something years).
>>     Nowadays, however, I have
>> grown impatient with entertaining others' stories and ideas.
> Then I am honored that you have entertained mine so far with some
> superficial level of patience <grin>.
>>     When/if I
>> deign to argue with someone, my rhetoric is (seemingly) full of non
>> sequiturs because I want to skip to the end ... and having made a
>> lifetime out of arguing, I believe myself to be capable of predicting
>> where an argument will end up.
> You don't hold a candle to my wife who is twice as smart as I ever will be,
> but also not particularly linear.  She doesn't just skip steps she makes 270
> degree turns while I'm not looking without deigning to bring me up to speed.
> I take a lot of beatings when I argue with her, but I think I'm a better
> listener and thinker for it.
>>     That impatience has seriously damaged some of the relationships
>> I've had with people who _thought_ they liked me. >8^)  But, in the
>> end, I remember the quote from FDR (I think): "I ask you to judge me
>> by he enemies I have made."
> Well, it is probably auspicious that I started out thinking I *didn't*
> like you.   I didn't like Doug when I met him the first time... but
> "curmudgeon" grows on me I guess.
>> Anyway, because I am a professional simulant
> Wow, that sounds like a line right out of Bladerunner... did you say
> Simulant or Replicant?
>> , I still have to maintain
>> an ability to tunnel in and out of gravity wells.  When I engage a new
>> client and go through the requirements extraction process, my old
>> facility with perspective hopping revives and I end up having fun.
> Yup, I know the game, and play it well (enough).
>> Conclusion of this silly missive: I'd like to be able to run some
>> experiments like the following.  Take all the guns from all the gun
>> advocates and hand them to the gun controlists.  Force them to use and
>> abuse the guns for a significant amount of time.
> I was thinking impregnating every man who was anti-choice and forcing
> them to birth and raise the babies.   It might not change their mind
> about abortion (I actually hope it wouldn't) but it might make them a lot
> more sympathetic and nurturing toward the women who *do* choose abortion.
> And it would also keep them off the streets in the meantime.
>>    Then compare surveys
>> taken before and after the experiment.  A similar experiment with any
>> given tool would be interesting.
> You'll have to pry my cordless drill and oscilliscope from my cold, dead
> fingers!
>
>>    I know I'd like a few months to play with our army of drones in
>> foreign countries, for example.
> And I'd like to watch a few third world countries play with our army of
> drones in our country for a few months.  Well, not really.  I suppose I'd
> rather see what a few dramatic performance and guerilla artists did with
> them instead.
>
> -Steve
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
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[Nick Thompson]

My time is worth a great deal less than an editor’s.  [sigh]  One of the hardest things about being a former academic is the discovery that nobody needs what you do. 

 

N

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 11:03 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] WAS:: Cliques, public, private. IS: Preserving email correspondence

 

Or pay an editor to do it. Is the dollar value of Nick's desire to see this properly recorded and archived greater or less than an editor's fee?

 

Let's watch the free market in action.

 

—R

 

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 10:46 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I doubt if it could be automated without one of

1 - Serious obeying of an agreed upon structure of the emails

2 - Serious machine learning algorithms

 

Instead, there are lots of tools that make it easier for you to do it by hand. An example is the class of "productivity tools" called outliners.  Here's a discussion of a set of them.

     http://goo.gl/q27LJ

Don't worry about their being mac oriented, there are web versions and versions for every computer.

 

Another approach would be for us all to stop using mail and instead use something that lends itself to different "views" .. like outliners do.  Using social media like Google+ etc help because they are designed to be "mashed up".

 

Tom may have a handle of several such tools.

 

   -- Owen

 

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

EVERYBODY,

This material is way too good to be packed down into the midden of old
email.  SO! Once again, I am going to ask this group a question I have asked
before: how can we develop conventions (or write a software program) that
will turn email correspondence into readable text.  The three main problems
are (1) headers (2) redundancy and (3) larding (which Steve Does here).
Larding is the practice of distributing ones response in the text.

I suspect some simple conventions and a word macro would do the trick, but
believe me, if you try to rescue one of these interchanges, it is VERY hard
work.

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 12:54 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Cliques, public, private.

Glen wrote (in response to my recent massive missive) -
> I will briefly match your story with one of my own, then jump to a
> conclusion.  I used to do more tunneling than I do now.  All growing
> up I maintained (almost disjoint) sets of acquaintances.  In high
> school they had names: heads, jocks, brains, etc.  Somehow, I managed
> to float easily between them, controlling information flow so that any
> antipathy one group had for another didn't bleed into an antipathy
> toward me personally.  In elementary school and college, there were
> fewer names but sharper incisions.  In elementary school, they were very
temporary.
> In college, they were very long-lasting.  E.g. if you "collapsed" into
> a Republican or perhaps a fan of Ayn Rand, you stayed there until long
> after college had ended.
I parallel your experience here.  I grew up isolated from people in general
and peers in particular.  I had one sister 2 years older, my parents with a
father who worked long hours.  We mostly lived further
from other people than I could walk easily alone.   When I arrived at
public school (a 2 mile walk, uphill each way, often in the snow) at age
6 I had very limited social experience with anyone much less children my
age.  I became very good, very quickly at integrating with any group.
There weren't many, it was a small school in a small town.  But I was so
curious about other people and the dynamics of 3 or 5 or 9 boys running like
a pack of wolves in the playground that I had to join in.  I did not
distinguish gender and was happy to sit and make mudpies with the girls, and
many of them were as at home "roping" my heels as I ran past (yes, the
school toys included lariats as well as kickballs) as the boys.

By high school I was in a large town, small city where I could know all of
my classmates (eventually a graduating class of 300) but not well
like I did with a class of roughly 20.   I knew how to kick shit with
the stompers, I was clever enough to hang with the honor society kids, I was
"hip" enough to hang with the drama kids, or the dopers if I wanted.  I was
not a team-sport kindof guy but was physical enough to
hang with the jocks.   But I was never really "in".  I was invited in.
But being fully "in" meant excluding members who were not "in".  So the
Stompers had to pick fights with the Jocks and the Stoners and tease the
Drama and Band and Honor Roll kids.  Similarly the Jocks and Stoners would
pick on the "good kids" and pick fights with the other "bad kids".  When I
would stand up for the good kid they were picking on or refuse to join the
rising rumble amongst bad kids on any side, I was
marked... I must be "one of them".   It never really caused me much
trouble except that it was clear that I wasn't one of them and would
never be even though I shared many of their interests and attitudes.   I
was as tough as most of the jocks or cowboys and the Stoners could be pretty
mean but well, they were always stoned, so... whatever... but I was also a
good student and *liked* most of the band/drama/smart kids
even though they could be tweaks.   But I also *liked* and identified
with the cowboys (grew up pretty much as one), and the jocks (liked being
athletic) and even the stoners (had my own outlaw side).  So what was all
the clicquing and intolerance about? Really?  And why was I one
of the few who could cut across those picket lines?   And one of the few
who didn't want to be a member of any one enough to reject the others?

Later it was politics... I knew I didn't want to hand my body and soul to
the US military under the circumstances of the Vietnam War... I wasn't sure
it was a bogus war as many of my peers seemed to be, but I
wasn't sure it was righteous as the remaining peers seemed to be.   My
leftie friends were sure I was a rightie and my rightie friends were sure I
was a leftie and since I'd read too much Ayn Rand and Bob Heinlein before I
had matured, I should have been a Libertarian but damned if they didn't all
seem like arrogant, selfish pricks to me.
This holds with me to today.  I voted for Obama twice for reasons which
probably don't fit those of anyone else who voted for him (hyperbole) and I
would have voted for McCain when he was going up against Bush but not after
he picked up Palin...  I am a big Gary Johnson fan on many topics, but
couldn't stand to throw my vote this time just to make a point.

As for public/private, I didn't hide my affinity with these groups in high
school... but they played "don't ask, don't tell" right up until I had to
confront someone(s) about their exclusive (and abusive) behaviour
of my friends who might not be "inside".   I wasn't afraid the jocks
would find out I got good grades or that the stoners would find out that I
rode horses, or that the goodie two-shoes would realize that I was willing
to break school rules or even real laws if it suited me
enough.   But I also had and required a private life.  I spent hours of
my time alone, enjoying the privacy of my own thoughts and actions.   If
anyone had insisted on taking that kind of privacy from me, I would have
been furious.   My parents, my teachers, my bosses, my friends all
managed not to conspire to invade my private spaces, private times.
Yet I had acquaintances who endured close supervision to the point of
parents or teachers or bosses practically expecting to be able to read
their minds.   I watched people trade their privacy of thought and
action for acceptance and approval.

>    I maintained my cross-group faculties until long after college.  I
> think it's what allowed me to successfully transition to the SFI from
> Lockheed Martin.
It served me well at LANL, even after it became somewhat of a hellhole
(apologies to Marcus and others still there, I'm not saying it is that for
you, just that it became that for me after 20 something years).
>    Nowadays, however, I have
> grown impatient with entertaining others' stories and ideas.
Then I am honored that you have entertained mine so far with some
superficial level of patience <grin>.
>    When/if I
> deign to argue with someone, my rhetoric is (seemingly) full of non
> sequiturs because I want to skip to the end ... and having made a
> lifetime out of arguing, I believe myself to be capable of predicting
> where an argument will end up.
You don't hold a candle to my wife who is twice as smart as I ever will be,
but also not particularly linear.  She doesn't just skip steps she makes 270
degree turns while I'm not looking without deigning to bring me up to speed.
I take a lot of beatings when I argue with her, but I think I'm a better
listener and thinker for it.
>    That impatience has seriously damaged some of the relationships
> I've had with people who _thought_ they liked me. >8^)  But, in the
> end, I remember the quote from FDR (I think): "I ask you to judge me
> by he enemies I have made."
Well, it is probably auspicious that I started out thinking I *didn't*
like you.   I didn't like Doug when I met him the first time... but
"curmudgeon" grows on me I guess.
> Anyway, because I am a professional simulant
Wow, that sounds like a line right out of Bladerunner... did you say
Simulant or Replicant?
> , I still have to maintain
> an ability to tunnel in and out of gravity wells.  When I engage a new
> client and go through the requirements extraction process, my old
> facility with perspective hopping revives and I end up having fun.
Yup, I know the game, and play it well (enough).
> Conclusion of this silly missive: I'd like to be able to run some
> experiments like the following.  Take all the guns from all the gun
> advocates and hand them to the gun controlists.  Force them to use and
> abuse the guns for a significant amount of time.
I was thinking impregnating every man who was anti-choice and forcing
them to birth and raise the babies.   It might not change their mind
about abortion (I actually hope it wouldn't) but it might make them a lot
more sympathetic and nurturing toward the women who *do* choose abortion.
And it would also keep them off the streets in the meantime.
>   Then compare surveys
> taken before and after the experiment.  A similar experiment with any
> given tool would be interesting.
You'll have to pry my cordless drill and oscilliscope from my cold, dead
fingers!

>   I know I'd like a few months to play with our army of drones in
> foreign countries, for example.
And I'd like to watch a few third world countries play with our army of
drones in our country for a few months.  Well, not really.  I suppose I'd
rather see what a few dramatic performance and guerilla artists did with
them instead.

-Steve

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[Steve Smith]

All -

In defense of Nick, I appreciate how he could come to "why cant we
just...".

As a systems developer with a little experience around natural language
processing, I agree with Doug and Owen that it is a naive question with
only extremely complex answers.  I understand why Nick asks these
questions and value the naivete that he is willing to expose to us.

I also appreciate Marcus' point.  I've been on both ends of the system
development question around documentation and helping others understand
what I've done or trying to understand what others have done.   I'm
often eclipsed by highly efficient and capable (usually) young
programmers who are (naturally) impatient with the rest of us for asking
them to explain what the've done.

I'm also often frustrated by others who want me to walk them through
every detail of something that is "obvious" to me, despite realizing it
wasn't obvious to me until I'd gone through the steps of creating it.  
Their ignorance is often no greater than mine was when I started, and
asking them to essentially re-develop the same algorithm or code is
possibly the only way they will come to my level of understanding.  I
can guide them through the shortcuts, but ultimately there is hard work
for them to do.

As I remember it, Nick tried to coin a Wiki based conversational forum I
think he called "Noodles" a number of years ago.   I don't remember the
details, I do remember being compelled by his conception of it.  I do
remember trying to participate with him (and maybe a couple of others?)
in using it, following the conventions. I guess I could probably dig it
out of the archives, thanks to Owen, et al. who have made sure we even
*have* archives.

Lacking brevity as usual,
  - Steve


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[Nick Thompson]

Marcus,

As you may remember, I have conducted a few informal seminars out here in
which email and forum conversations were crucial and voluminous.  Two of
those conversations have metamorphosed into publications.  So I think I have
passed the criterion of being at least "slightly motivated."  Early in the
days of the Santa Fe Complex I tried to move email into a wiki format in
order to get the group writing up its ideas about Complexity.  This
generated some very interesting material, but never crossed the bridge into
publication.  Chatting amongst ourselves is fine, and I enjoy it, but I like
to see good ideas developed, organized, and published.

Let me just say that moving email into readable text  is harder than it
seems.  


Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
Daniels
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 11:40 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] WAS:: Cliques, public, private. IS: Preserving email
correspondence

On 1/19/13 10:35 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> This material is way too good to be packed down into the midden of old
email.
I know someone who is a good programmer.  He's generally better than the
people around him and among other things he has been accused of being
purposely uncommunicative.  He's smart.  He has said things like "If you
want to know what's going on, read the commit log and read the source code
diffs."  Other people felt that he should write high level
documents, give talks, and so on.   He felt it was not his problem if
people were not willing or were not able to bring themselves up to
speed.  To him, they just would not engage.   He was interested in the
problem and not in educating people.  He had no problem educating himself.

There's a similar situation here.   A goal a person can have from a
conversation is to extract some information from another, as if
acquiring an asset.   Another goal a person can have is to just have a
conversation or argument for its own sake.

A slightly motivated person can handle some headers.

Marcus

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[Eric Charles]

Despite protestations of others, and being only a mediocre programmer myself... I don't imagine it would be too hard to write something that would make a "master discussion" document, combining all of the comments. The big problem is that the finished document wouldn't be very useful in itself. Nothing about how an email conversation like this unfolds is designed for a simultaneous, straight read. Such a document might, however, save someone a lot of time if they wanted it as a first step for hand editing the conversation into something more useful.

There is a lot of plagiarism detection software out there which is good at finding text matches between different documents. The main problem of integrating the threads can't be too much more difficult, if one just does it step-by-step (like an iterative regression problem).

The biggest dilemma I could see is in representing the asynchronous nature of the communication, which would require representing the order in which comments appeared.... and just putting a date and time before each comment will not capture that well for a reader.

Eric

P.S. I am envisioning something that turns a string of email texts into something like a GooglePlus document (blessed be its soul), or a string of comments on a blog. There would of course be some weird errors when people use very atypical means of responding to an email... but it shouldn't be too hard to get most of the thread into readable form. For the very atypical replies, you just do something with them, and let the editor figure it out later.

--------
Eric Charles
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State, Altoona

---

From: "Douglas Roberts" <[hidden email]>
To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <[hidden email]>
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 1:10:15 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] WAS:: Cliques, public,        private. IS: Preserving email correspondence

Guarantee that it would cost less to have an editor do it than it would take in developers time to implement a software system to do even part of it.  There are no existing language processing systems that  could do it all.

And Nick, I can hear you thinking, "Why can't you just..."

Probably don't want to go there until after you've designed, implemented, tested, put into production, and maintained your first software system.

--Doug

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 11:02 AM, Robert Holmes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Or pay an editor to do it. Is the dollar value of Nick's desire to see this properly recorded and archived greater or less than an editor's fee?

Let's watch the free market in action.

—R

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 10:46 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I doubt if it could be automated without one of

1 - Serious obeying of an agreed upon structure of the emails

2 - Serious machine learning algorithms

Instead, there are lots of tools that make it easier for you to do it by hand. An example is the class of "productivity tools" called outliners.  Here's a discussion of a set of them.

     http://goo.gl/q27LJ

Don't worry about their being mac oriented, there are web versions and versions for every computer.

Another approach would be for us all to stop using mail and instead use something that lends itself to different "views" .. like outliners do.  Using social media like Google+ etc help because they are designed to be "mashed up".

Tom may have a handle of several such tools.

   -- Owen

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

EVERYBODY,

This material is way too good to be packed down into the midden of old
email.  SO! Once again, I am going to ask this group a question I have asked
before: how can we develop conventions (or write a software program) that
will turn email correspondence into readable text.  The three main problems
are (1) headers (2) redundancy and (3) larding (which Steve Does here).
Larding is the practice of distributing ones response in the text.

I suspect some simple conventions and a word macro would do the trick, but
believe me, if you try to rescue one of these interchanges, it is VERY hard
work.

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 12:54 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Cliques, public, private.

Glen wrote (in response to my recent massive missive) -
> I will briefly match your story with one of my own, then jump to a
> conclusion.  I used to do more tunneling than I do now.  All growing
> up I maintained (almost disjoint) sets of acquaintances.  In high
> school they had names: heads, jocks, brains, etc.  Somehow, I managed
> to float easily between them, controlling information flow so that any
> antipathy one group had for another didn't bleed into an antipathy
> toward me personally.  In elementary school and college, there were
> fewer names but sharper incisions.  In elementary school, they were very
temporary.
> In college, they were very long-lasting.  E.g. if you "collapsed" into
> a Republican or perhaps a fan of Ayn Rand, you stayed there until long
> after college had ended.
I parallel your experience here.  I grew up isolated from people in general
and peers in particular.  I had one sister 2 years older, my parents with a
father who worked long hours.  We mostly lived further
from other people than I could walk easily alone.   When I arrived at
public school (a 2 mile walk, uphill each way, often in the snow) at age
6 I had very limited social experience with anyone much less children my
age.  I became very good, very quickly at integrating with any group.
There weren't many, it was a small school in a small town.  But I was so
curious about other people and the dynamics of 3 or 5 or 9 boys running like
a pack of wolves in the playground that I had to join in.  I did not
distinguish gender and was happy to sit and make mudpies with the girls, and
many of them were as at home "roping" my heels as I ran past (yes, the
school toys included lariats as well as kickballs) as the boys.

By high school I was in a large town, small city where I could know all of
my classmates (eventually a graduating class of 300) but not well
like I did with a class of roughly 20.   I knew how to kick shit with
the stompers, I was clever enough to hang with the honor society kids, I was
"hip" enough to hang with the drama kids, or the dopers if I wanted.  I was
not a team-sport kindof guy but was physical enough to
hang with the jocks.   But I was never really "in".  I was invited in.
But being fully "in" meant excluding members who were not "in".  So the
Stompers had to pick fights with the Jocks and the Stoners and tease the
Drama and Band and Honor Roll kids.  Similarly the Jocks and Stoners would
pick on the "good kids" and pick fights with the other "bad kids".  When I
would stand up for the good kid they were picking on or refuse to join the
rising rumble amongst bad kids on any side, I was
marked... I must be "one of them".   It never really caused me much
trouble except that it was clear that I wasn't one of them and would
never be even though I shared many of their interests and attitudes.   I
was as tough as most of the jocks or cowboys and the Stoners could be pretty
mean but well, they were always stoned, so... whatever... but I was also a
good student and *liked* most of the band/drama/smart kids
even though they could be tweaks.   But I also *liked* and identified
with the cowboys (grew up pretty much as one), and the jocks (liked being
athletic) and even the stoners (had my own outlaw side).  So what was all
the clicquing and intolerance about? Really?  And why was I one
of the few who could cut across those picket lines?   And one of the few
who didn't want to be a member of any one enough to reject the others?

Later it was politics... I knew I didn't want to hand my body and soul to
the US military under the circumstances of the Vietnam War... I wasn't sure
it was a bogus war as many of my peers seemed to be, but I
wasn't sure it was righteous as the remaining peers seemed to be.   My
leftie friends were sure I was a rightie and my rightie friends were sure I
was a leftie and since I'd read too much Ayn Rand and Bob Heinlein before I
had matured, I should have been a Libertarian but damned if they didn't all
seem like arrogant, selfish pricks to me.
This holds with me to today.  I voted for Obama twice for reasons which
probably don't fit those of anyone else who voted for him (hyperbole) and I
would have voted for McCain when he was going up against Bush but not after
he picked up Palin...  I am a big Gary Johnson fan on many topics, but
couldn't stand to throw my vote this time just to make a point.

As for public/private, I didn't hide my affinity with these groups in high
school... but they played "don't ask, don't tell" right up until I had to
confront someone(s) about their exclusive (and abusive) behaviour
of my friends who might not be "inside".   I wasn't afraid the jocks
would find out I got good grades or that the stoners would find out that I
rode horses, or that the goodie two-shoes would realize that I was willing
to break school rules or even real laws if it suited me
enough.   But I also had and required a private life.  I spent hours of
my time alone, enjoying the privacy of my own thoughts and actions.   If
anyone had insisted on taking that kind of privacy from me, I would have
been furious.   My parents, my teachers, my bosses, my friends all
managed not to conspire to invade my private spaces, private times.
Yet I had acquaintances who endured close supervision to the point of
parents or teachers or bosses practically expecting to be able to read
their minds.   I watched people trade their privacy of thought and
action for acceptance and approval.

>    I maintained my cross-group faculties until long after college.  I
> think it's what allowed me to successfully transition to the SFI from
> Lockheed Martin.
It served me well at LANL, even after it became somewhat of a hellhole
(apologies to Marcus and others still there, I'm not saying it is that for
you, just that it became that for me after 20 something years).
>    Nowadays, however, I have
> grown impatient with entertaining others' stories and ideas.
Then I am honored that you have entertained mine so far with some
superficial level of patience <grin>.
>    When/if I
> deign to argue with someone, my rhetoric is (seemingly) full of non
> sequiturs because I want to skip to the end ... and having made a
> lifetime out of arguing, I believe myself to be capable of predicting
> where an argument will end up.
You don't hold a candle to my wife who is twice as smart as I ever will be,
but also not particularly linear.  She doesn't just skip steps she makes 270
degree turns while I'm not looking without deigning to bring me up to speed.
I take a lot of beatings when I argue with her, but I think I'm a better
listener and thinker for it.
>    That impatience has seriously damaged some of the relationships
> I've had with people who _thought_ they liked me. >8^)  But, in the
> end, I remember the quote from FDR (I think): "I ask you to judge me
> by he enemies I have made."
Well, it is probably auspicious that I started out thinking I *didn't*
like you.   I didn't like Doug when I met him the first time... but
"curmudgeon" grows on me I guess.
> Anyway, because I am a professional simulant
Wow, that sounds like a line right out of Bladerunner... did you say
Simulant or Replicant?
> , I still have to maintain
> an ability to tunnel in and out of gravity wells.  When I engage a new
> client and go through the requirements extraction process, my old
> facility with perspective hopping revives and I end up having fun.
Yup, I know the game, and play it well (enough).
> Conclusion of this silly missive: I'd like to be able to run some
> experiments like the following.  Take all the guns from all the gun
> advocates and hand them to the gun controlists.  Force them to use and
> abuse the guns for a significant amount of time.
I was thinking impregnating every man who was anti-choice and forcing
them to birth and raise the babies.   It might not change their mind
about abortion (I actually hope it wouldn't) but it might make them a lot
more sympathetic and nurturing toward the women who *do* choose abortion.
And it would also keep them off the streets in the meantime.
>   Then compare surveys
> taken before and after the experiment.  A similar experiment with any
> given tool would be interesting.
You'll have to pry my cordless drill and oscilliscope from my cold, dead
fingers!

>   I know I'd like a few months to play with our army of drones in
> foreign countries, for example.
And I'd like to watch a few third world countries play with our army of
drones in our country for a few months.  Well, not really.  I suppose I'd
rather see what a few dramatic performance and guerilla artists did with
them instead.

-Steve

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--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-672-8213 - Mobile

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[Eric Charles]

P.S. I meant, "GoogleWave document (blessed be its soul)".

--------
Eric Charles
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State, Altoona

---

From: "Eric Charles" <[e-mail]>
To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <[e-mail]>
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 2:34:10 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] WAS:: Cliques, public, private. IS: Preserving email correspondence

Despite protestations of others, and being only a mediocre programmer myself... I don't imagine it would be too hard to write something that would make a "master discussion" document, combining all of the comments. The big problem is that the finished document wouldn't be very useful in itself. Nothing about how an email conversation like this unfolds is designed for a simultaneous, straight read. Such a document might, however, save someone a lot of time if they wanted it as a first step for hand editing the conversation into something more useful.

There is a lot of plagiarism detection software out there which is good at finding text matches between different documents. The main problem of integrating the threads can't be too much more difficult, if one just does it step-by-step (like an iterative regression problem).

The biggest dilemma I could see is in representing the asynchronous nature of the communication, which would require representing the order in which comments appeared.... and just putting a date and time before each comment will not capture that well for a reader.

Eric

P.S. I am envisioning something that turns a string of email texts into something like a GooglePlus document (blessed be its soul), or a string of comments on a blog. There would of course be some weird errors when people use very atypical means of responding to an email... but it shouldn't be too hard to get most of the thread into readable form. For the very atypical replies, you just do something with them, and let the editor figure it out later.

--------
Eric Charles
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State, Altoona

---

From: "Douglas Roberts" <[e-mail]>
To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" <[e-mail]>
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 1:10:15 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] WAS:: Cliques, public,        private. IS: Preserving email correspondence

Guarantee that it would cost less to have an editor do it than it would take in developers time to implement a software system to do even part of it.  There are no existing language processing systems that  could do it all.

And Nick, I can hear you thinking, "Why can't you just..."

Probably don't want to go there until after you've designed, implemented, tested, put into production, and maintained your first software system.

--Doug

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 11:02 AM, Robert Holmes <[hidden email]> wrote:

Or pay an editor to do it. Is the dollar value of Nick's desire to see this properly recorded and archived greater or less than an editor's fee?

Let's watch the free market in action.

—R

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 10:46 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

I doubt if it could be automated without one of

1 - Serious obeying of an agreed upon structure of the emails

2 - Serious machine learning algorithms

Instead, there are lots of tools that make it easier for you to do it by hand. An example is the class of "productivity tools" called outliners.  Here's a discussion of a set of them.

     http://goo.gl/q27LJ

Don't worry about their being mac oriented, there are web versions and versions for every computer.

Another approach would be for us all to stop using mail and instead use something that lends itself to different "views" .. like outliners do.  Using social media like Google+ etc help because they are designed to be "mashed up".

Tom may have a handle of several such tools.

   -- Owen

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

EVERYBODY,

This material is way too good to be packed down into the midden of old
email.  SO! Once again, I am going to ask this group a question I have asked
before: how can we develop conventions (or write a software program) that
will turn email correspondence into readable text.  The three main problems
are (1) headers (2) redundancy and (3) larding (which Steve Does here).
Larding is the practice of distributing ones response in the text.

I suspect some simple conventions and a word macro would do the trick, but
believe me, if you try to rescue one of these interchanges, it is VERY hard
work.

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 12:54 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Cliques, public, private.

Glen wrote (in response to my recent massive missive) -
> I will briefly match your story with one of my own, then jump to a
> conclusion.  I used to do more tunneling than I do now.  All growing
> up I maintained (almost disjoint) sets of acquaintances.  In high
> school they had names: heads, jocks, brains, etc.  Somehow, I managed
> to float easily between them, controlling information flow so that any
> antipathy one group had for another didn't bleed into an antipathy
> toward me personally.  In elementary school and college, there were
> fewer names but sharper incisions.  In elementary school, they were very
temporary.
> In college, they were very long-lasting.  E.g. if you "collapsed" into
> a Republican or perhaps a fan of Ayn Rand, you stayed there until long
> after college had ended.
I parallel your experience here.  I grew up isolated from people in general
and peers in particular.  I had one sister 2 years older, my parents with a
father who worked long hours.  We mostly lived further
from other people than I could walk easily alone.   When I arrived at
public school (a 2 mile walk, uphill each way, often in the snow) at age
6 I had very limited social experience with anyone much less children my
age.  I became very good, very quickly at integrating with any group.
There weren't many, it was a small school in a small town.  But I was so
curious about other people and the dynamics of 3 or 5 or 9 boys running like
a pack of wolves in the playground that I had to join in.  I did not
distinguish gender and was happy to sit and make mudpies with the girls, and
many of them were as at home "roping" my heels as I ran past (yes, the
school toys included lariats as well as kickballs) as the boys.

By high school I was in a large town, small city where I could know all of
my classmates (eventually a graduating class of 300) but not well
like I did with a class of roughly 20.   I knew how to kick shit with
the stompers, I was clever enough to hang with the honor society kids, I was
"hip" enough to hang with the drama kids, or the dopers if I wanted.  I was
not a team-sport kindof guy but was physical enough to
hang with the jocks.   But I was never really "in".  I was invited in.
But being fully "in" meant excluding members who were not "in".  So the
Stompers had to pick fights with the Jocks and the Stoners and tease the
Drama and Band and Honor Roll kids.  Similarly the Jocks and Stoners would
pick on the "good kids" and pick fights with the other "bad kids".  When I
would stand up for the good kid they were picking on or refuse to join the
rising rumble amongst bad kids on any side, I was
marked... I must be "one of them".   It never really caused me much
trouble except that it was clear that I wasn't one of them and would
never be even though I shared many of their interests and attitudes.   I
was as tough as most of the jocks or cowboys and the Stoners could be pretty
mean but well, they were always stoned, so... whatever... but I was also a
good student and *liked* most of the band/drama/smart kids
even though they could be tweaks.   But I also *liked* and identified
with the cowboys (grew up pretty much as one), and the jocks (liked being
athletic) and even the stoners (had my own outlaw side).  So what was all
the clicquing and intolerance about? Really?  And why was I one
of the few who could cut across those picket lines?   And one of the few
who didn't want to be a member of any one enough to reject the others?

Later it was politics... I knew I didn't want to hand my body and soul to
the US military under the circumstances of the Vietnam War... I wasn't sure
it was a bogus war as many of my peers seemed to be, but I
wasn't sure it was righteous as the remaining peers seemed to be.   My
leftie friends were sure I was a rightie and my rightie friends were sure I
was a leftie and since I'd read too much Ayn Rand and Bob Heinlein before I
had matured, I should have been a Libertarian but damned if they didn't all
seem like arrogant, selfish pricks to me.
This holds with me to today.  I voted for Obama twice for reasons which
probably don't fit those of anyone else who voted for him (hyperbole) and I
would have voted for McCain when he was going up against Bush but not after
he picked up Palin...  I am a big Gary Johnson fan on many topics, but
couldn't stand to throw my vote this time just to make a point.

As for public/private, I didn't hide my affinity with these groups in high
school... but they played "don't ask, don't tell" right up until I had to
confront someone(s) about their exclusive (and abusive) behaviour
of my friends who might not be "inside".   I wasn't afraid the jocks
would find out I got good grades or that the stoners would find out that I
rode horses, or that the goodie two-shoes would realize that I was willing
to break school rules or even real laws if it suited me
enough.   But I also had and required a private life.  I spent hours of
my time alone, enjoying the privacy of my own thoughts and actions.   If
anyone had insisted on taking that kind of privacy from me, I would have
been furious.   My parents, my teachers, my bosses, my friends all
managed not to conspire to invade my private spaces, private times.
Yet I had acquaintances who endured close supervision to the point of
parents or teachers or bosses practically expecting to be able to read
their minds.   I watched people trade their privacy of thought and
action for acceptance and approval.

>    I maintained my cross-group faculties until long after college.  I
> think it's what allowed me to successfully transition to the SFI from
> Lockheed Martin.
It served me well at LANL, even after it became somewhat of a hellhole
(apologies to Marcus and others still there, I'm not saying it is that for
you, just that it became that for me after 20 something years).
>    Nowadays, however, I have
> grown impatient with entertaining others' stories and ideas.
Then I am honored that you have entertained mine so far with some
superficial level of patience <grin>.
>    When/if I
> deign to argue with someone, my rhetoric is (seemingly) full of non
> sequiturs because I want to skip to the end ... and having made a
> lifetime out of arguing, I believe myself to be capable of predicting
> where an argument will end up.
You don't hold a candle to my wife who is twice as smart as I ever will be,
but also not particularly linear.  She doesn't just skip steps she makes 270
degree turns while I'm not looking without deigning to bring me up to speed.
I take a lot of beatings when I argue with her, but I think I'm a better
listener and thinker for it.
>    That impatience has seriously damaged some of the relationships
> I've had with people who _thought_ they liked me. >8^)  But, in the
> end, I remember the quote from FDR (I think): "I ask you to judge me
> by he enemies I have made."
Well, it is probably auspicious that I started out thinking I *didn't*
like you.   I didn't like Doug when I met him the first time... but
"curmudgeon" grows on me I guess.
> Anyway, because I am a professional simulant
Wow, that sounds like a line right out of Bladerunner... did you say
Simulant or Replicant?
> , I still have to maintain
> an ability to tunnel in and out of gravity wells.  When I engage a new
> client and go through the requirements extraction process, my old
> facility with perspective hopping revives and I end up having fun.
Yup, I know the game, and play it well (enough).
> Conclusion of this silly missive: I'd like to be able to run some
> experiments like the following.  Take all the guns from all the gun
> advocates and hand them to the gun controlists.  Force them to use and
> abuse the guns for a significant amount of time.
I was thinking impregnating every man who was anti-choice and forcing
them to birth and raise the babies.   It might not change their mind
about abortion (I actually hope it wouldn't) but it might make them a lot
more sympathetic and nurturing toward the women who *do* choose abortion.
And it would also keep them off the streets in the meantime.
>   Then compare surveys
> taken before and after the experiment.  A similar experiment with any
> given tool would be interesting.
You'll have to pry my cordless drill and oscilliscope from my cold, dead
fingers!

>   I know I'd like a few months to play with our army of drones in
> foreign countries, for example.
And I'd like to watch a few third world countries play with our army of
drones in our country for a few months.  Well, not really.  I suppose I'd
rather see what a few dramatic performance and guerilla artists did with
them instead.

-Steve

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--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

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[Douglas Roberts-2]

I'm pretty solidly in the same came as Marcus' programmer acquaintance.  The working philosophy in my case being, "Shit: if I can do it, how hard could it be?  You must want someone to spoon feed you."

I've got relatives who fall squarely into the polar opposite camp, that of studied naivete. They are so good at it, if fact, that it comes clearly across as studied stupidity.  This approach didn't serve either of them very well throughout the course of their now, in both cases, nearly finished lifetimes.

To be fair to Nick, however, once you realize that he uses his big, bold naivete as the vehicle to get others to expound on why <whatever is the current topic of interest>, then it's all ok again.

--Doug

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 1/19/13 10:35 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

This material is way too good to be packed down into the midden of old email.

I know someone who is a good programmer.  He's generally better than the people around him and among other things he has been accused of being purposely uncommunicative.  He's smart.  He has said things like "If you want to know what's going on, read the commit log and read the source code diffs."  Other people felt that he should write high level documents, give talks, and so on.   He felt it was not his problem if people were not willing or were not able to bring themselves up to speed.  To him, they just would not engage.   He was interested in the problem and not in educating people.  He had no problem educating himself.

There's a similar situation here.   A goal a person can have from a conversation is to extract some information from another, as if acquiring an asset.   Another goal a person can have is to just have a conversation or argument for its own sake.

A slightly motivated person can handle some headers.

Marcus

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[Steve Smith]

Doug said:
> To be fair to Nick, however, once you realize that he uses his big,
> bold naivete as the vehicle to get others to expound on why <whatever
> is the current topic of interest>, then it's all ok again.

I c(w)ouldn't have said it more succinctly myself!


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[Nick Thompson]

I don't think I ever said, "why cant we just...".  Did I?  

I had forgotten about "noodles".  I can't even remember how it worked.  Or
where it is.  

N

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 12:23 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Preserving email correspondence

All -

In defense of Nick, I appreciate how he could come to "why cant we just...".

As a systems developer with a little experience around natural language
processing, I agree with Doug and Owen that it is a naive question with only
extremely complex answers.  I understand why Nick asks these questions and
value the naivete that he is willing to expose to us.

I also appreciate Marcus' point.  I've been on both ends of the system
development question around documentation and helping others understand
what I've done or trying to understand what others have done.   I'm
often eclipsed by highly efficient and capable (usually) young programmers
who are (naturally) impatient with the rest of us for asking them to explain
what the've done.

I'm also often frustrated by others who want me to walk them through every
detail of something that is "obvious" to me, despite realizing it
wasn't obvious to me until I'd gone through the steps of creating it.  
Their ignorance is often no greater than mine was when I started, and asking
them to essentially re-develop the same algorithm or code is possibly the
only way they will come to my level of understanding.  I can guide them
through the shortcuts, but ultimately there is hard work for them to do.

As I remember it, Nick tried to coin a Wiki based conversational forum I
think he called "Noodles" a number of years ago.   I don't remember the
details, I do remember being compelled by his conception of it.  I do
remember trying to participate with him (and maybe a couple of others?) in
using it, following the conventions. I guess I could probably dig it out of
the archives, thanks to Owen, et al. who have made sure we even
*have* archives.

Lacking brevity as usual,
  - Steve


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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 1/19/13 12:29 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Two of
> those conversations have metamorphosed into publications.  So I think I have
> passed the criterion of being at least "slightly motivated."
Who is the audience for such a publication?  I think there is no
audience except the crowd that has already assembled.  It's not a new
widget that's been built, and it does not include a new fact or
measurement about the world.   It refined talk that doesn't talk back.

Marcus

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[Douglas Roberts-2]

Marcus, are you trying to suggest that we are not as fascinating as we think we are?

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 1/19/13 12:29 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Two of
those conversations have metamorphosed into publications.  So I think I have
passed the criterion of being at least "slightly motivated."

Who is the audience for such a publication?  I think there is no audience except the crowd that has already assembled.  It's not a new widget that's been built, and it does not include a new fact or measurement about the world.   It refined talk that doesn't talk back.

Marcus

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[Roger Critchlow-2]

No, he's saying we're exactly as fascinating as we are, and not a jot more.

-- rec --

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 2:24 PM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, are you trying to suggest that we are not as fascinating as we think we are?

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 1/19/13 12:29 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Two of
those conversations have metamorphosed into publications.  So I think I have
passed the criterion of being at least "slightly motivated."

Who is the audience for such a publication?  I think there is no audience except the crowd that has already assembled.  It's not a new widget that's been built, and it does not include a new fact or measurement about the world.   It refined talk that doesn't talk back.

Marcus

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[Douglas Roberts-2]

I see your point.

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 2:36 PM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

No, he's saying we're exactly as fascinating as we are, and not a jot more.

-- rec --

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 2:24 PM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus, are you trying to suggest that we are not as fascinating as we think we are?

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 1/19/13 12:29 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Two of
those conversations have metamorphosed into publications.  So I think I have
passed the criterion of being at least "slightly motivated."

Who is the audience for such a publication?  I think there is no audience except the crowd that has already assembled.  It's not a new widget that's been built, and it does not include a new fact or measurement about the world.   It refined talk that doesn't talk back.

Marcus

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[Roger Critchlow-2]

So, the thread exists in the archives at redfish, or where ever, and will continue to exist there for quite a while.

The first tool is one which given a mailing list archive and a thread "subject" extracts the messages posted on the "subject".

The second tool would take the raw messages in the thread and arrange them as a tree of replies to the original posting.

Both of these are part of every existing program that displays mailing list archives by threads.

The third tool is one that identifies quoted material and replaces it with a reference to the original text or to the previous level of quotation.  This is where it gets hairy, but for any section that's marked as quoted there either will be a successful identification of the source or there won't. 

At this point you can view the thread as a sequence or tree of original contributions with all quoted material represented as ellipses, which may render the original contributions unintelligible, but that's Nick's problem.

-- rec --

On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 1:14 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

I don't think I ever said, "why cant we just...".  Did I?

I had forgotten about "noodles".  I can't even remember how it worked.  Or
where it is.

N

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 12:23 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Preserving email correspondence

All -

In defense of Nick, I appreciate how he could come to "why cant we just...".

As a systems developer with a little experience around natural language
processing, I agree with Doug and Owen that it is a naive question with only
extremely complex answers.  I understand why Nick asks these questions and
value the naivete that he is willing to expose to us.

I also appreciate Marcus' point.  I've been on both ends of the system
development question around documentation and helping others understand
what I've done or trying to understand what others have done.   I'm
often eclipsed by highly efficient and capable (usually) young programmers
who are (naturally) impatient with the rest of us for asking them to explain
what the've done.

I'm also often frustrated by others who want me to walk them through every
detail of something that is "obvious" to me, despite realizing it
wasn't obvious to me until I'd gone through the steps of creating it.
Their ignorance is often no greater than mine was when I started, and asking
them to essentially re-develop the same algorithm or code is possibly the
only way they will come to my level of understanding.  I can guide them
through the shortcuts, but ultimately there is hard work for them to do.

As I remember it, Nick tried to coin a Wiki based conversational forum I
think he called "Noodles" a number of years ago.   I don't remember the
details, I do remember being compelled by his conception of it.  I do
remember trying to participate with him (and maybe a couple of others?) in
using it, following the conventions. I guess I could probably dig it out of
the archives, thanks to Owen, et al. who have made sure we even
*have* archives.

Lacking brevity as usual,
  - Steve


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[Nick Thompson]

Marcus wrote

Who is the audience for such a publication? 

 

I dunno.  One's in a collection of essays on the writings of E. B. Holt and the other is in the journal, Behavior and Philosophy. I would guess that the readership is somewhat less than the circulation of the FRIAM list, but still, it’s DIFFERENT people.   People care about stuff other than new widgets, and they are interested in other people’s thoughts on The Big Questions.   Despite the fact that the US is kind of a cess pit of anti intellectualism,  books do sell and people do read them. 

 

Nick

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 2:22 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] WAS:: Cliques, public, private. IS: Preserving email correspondence

 

On 1/19/13 12:29 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

> Two of

> those conversations have metamorphosed into publications.  So I think

> I have passed the criterion of being at least "slightly motivated."

Who is the audience for such a publication?  I think there is no audience except the crowd that has already assembled.  It's not a new widget that's been built, and it does not include a new fact or

measurement about the world.   It refined talk that doesn't talk back.

 

Marcus

 

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